Quotations about:
    attitude


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It’s no use crying over spilt evils. It’s better to mop them up laughing.

Eleanor Farjeon
Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965) English author
Gypsy and Ginger, “Gypsy and Ginger Take Things Seriously” [Gypsy] (1920)
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Added on 1-Jun-23 | Last updated 1-Jun-23
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There are no exact directions. There are probably no directions at all. The only things that I am able to recommend at this moment are: a sense of humour; an ability to see the ridiculous and the absurd dimensions of things; an ability to laugh about others as well as about ourselves; a sense of irony; and, of everything that invites parody in this world. In other words: rising above things, or looking at them from a distance; sensibility to the hidden presence of all the more dangerous types of conceit in others, as well as in ourselves; good cheer; an unostentatious certainty of the meaning of things; gratitude for the gift of life and courage to assume responsibility for it; and, a vigilant mind.

Václav Havel (1936-2011) Czech playwright, essayist, dissident, politician
Speech, accepting the “Open Society” Prize, Central European University (24 Jun 1999)
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Added on 23-Feb-23 | Last updated 24-Feb-23
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but whotthehell archy whotthehell
jamais triste archy jamais triste
that is my motto.

Don Marquis (1878-1937) American journalist and humorist
archy and mehitabel, “mehitabel sees paris” (1927)
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"Jamais triste" means "never sad" in French.
 
Added on 18-Aug-21 | Last updated 18-Aug-21
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He who has conquered is not conqueror
Unless the conquered one confesses it.

[Qui vincit non est victor nisi victus fatetur.]

Quintus Ennius
Ennius (239-169 BC) Roman poet, writer [Quintus Ennius]
Annales, Fragment 485
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Quoted by Marcus Servius Honoratus, Commentaries on the Poems of Virgil [In Vergilii Carmina Comentarii], Book 11. Alt. trans.:
  • "He who conquers is not the conqueror unless the conquered admits it." [Source, 493 (Vahlen)]
  • "He who conquers is no conqueror unless the conquered admits it." [Source, 513]
  • "The victor is not victorious if the vanquished does not consider himself so." [Source]
 
Added on 12-Mar-20 | Last updated 12-Mar-20
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If life becomes hard to bear we think of a change in our circumstances. But the most important and effective change, a change in our own attitude, hardly even occurs to us, and the resolution to take such a step is very difficult for us.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) Austrian-English philosopher
Culture and Value, 1946 (1977) [tr. Winch (1980)]
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Added on 25-Feb-20 | Last updated 25-Feb-20
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If you can’t change your fate, change your attitude.

(Other Authors and Sources)
Chinese proverb

Quoted by Amy Tan, The Kitchen God’s Wife (1992).
 
Added on 11-Feb-20 | Last updated 11-Feb-20
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The essence of spiritual practice is your attitude toward others.

The Dalai Lama (b. 1935) Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader [The 14th Dalai Lama; a/k/a Lhama Thondup / Lhama Dhondrub; b. Tenzin Gyatso]
“The Dalai Lama in Depth,” Interview with Catherine Ingram, Yoga Journal (Jan/Feb 1990)
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Added on 12-Nov-19 | Last updated 12-Nov-19
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Reason allows us to determine when our wishes are in irrevocable conflict with reality, and then bids us to submit ourselves willingly, rather than angrily or bitterly, to necessities. We may be powerless to alter certain events, but we remain free to choose our attitude towards them, and it is in our spontaneous acceptance of necessity that we find our distinctive freedom.

Alain de Botton (b. 1969) Swiss-British author
The Consolations of Philosophy, ch. 3 “Consolation for Frustration”(2000)
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Added on 10-Oct-19 | Last updated 10-Oct-19
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The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer somebody else up.

Twain - cheer somebody else up - wist_info quote

Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Mark Twain’s Notebook [ed. Paine (1935)]

Often given as "The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up." More discussion here.
 
Added on 16-Aug-16 | Last updated 26-Jan-19
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I live my life in celebration and in praise of the life I’m living. What you focus on expands. The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate. The more you complain, the more you find fault, the more misery and fault you will have to find.

Oprah Winfrey (b. 1954) American TV personality, actress
“Words of the Week,” Jet (27 Oct 1986)
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Added on 13-May-16 | Last updated 13-May-16
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Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music, and rings itself all the way through; and thou shalt make of it a dance, a dirge, or a grand life-march as thou wilt.

Carlyle - a dance a dirge - wist_info quote

Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish essayist and historian
(Attributed)

Variant: "Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings itself the way through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life-march, as thou wilt."

The earliest reference I can find to this is its quotation in (or perhaps adjacent to) Kate W. Hamilton, "Ariel Seaton's Rainy Day," The Ladies' Repository (Jan 1868).
 
Added on 27-Apr-16 | Last updated 27-Apr-16
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YODA: No! Try not. Do — or do not. There is no try.

Lawrence Kasdan (b. 1949) American screenwriter, director, producer
The Empire Strikes Back (1980) [with George Lucas and Leigh Brackett]
 
Added on 5-Feb-16 | Last updated 5-Feb-16
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As I have often told you, politeness and good beeding are absolutely necessary to adorn any, or all other good qualities or talents. Without them, no knowledge, no perfection whatever, is seen in its best light. The scholar, without good breeding, is a pedant; the philosopher, a cynic; the soldier, a brute; and every man disagreeable.

Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773) English statesman, wit [Philip Dormer Stanhope]
Letter to his son, #128 (9 Oct 1747)
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Added on 29-Jan-16 | Last updated 18-Oct-22
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I don’t want to be bitter about life — about love and friendship and all the human emotional entanglements. I’ve had more than my share of human disappointments, deprivations, disillusionment. I want to love people and life above all; I want to be able to say always, “if you feel bitter or disillusioned, there is something wrong with yourself, not with people, not with life.”

Henry Miller (1891-1980) American novelist
Letter to Anaïs Nin (24 May 1933)
 
Added on 26-May-15 | Last updated 26-May-15
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Bad temper is its own scourge. Few things are bitterer than to feel bitter. A man’s venom poisons himself more than his victim.

Charles Buxton (1823-1871) English brewer, philanthropist, writer, politician
Notes of Thought #560 (1873)
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Added on 5-May-15 | Last updated 3-Aug-20
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Great as our differences are, all of us — professors, politicians, preachers — would no doubt find that we had much in common after all if it were possible to meet in the flesh some distinguished representatives from a former age.

Carl L. Becker (1873-1945) American historian
The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-century Philosophers (1932)
 
Added on 30-Dec-14 | Last updated 30-Dec-14
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That thro certain Humours or Passions, and from Temper merely, a Man may be completely miserable; let his outward Circumstances be ever so fortunate.

Anthony Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713) English politician and philosopher
“An Inquiry Concerning Virtue, or Merit”
 
Added on 28-Nov-14 | Last updated 28-Nov-14
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One ship sails East,
And another West,
By the self-same winds that blow,
‘Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales,
That tells the way we go.

Like the winds of the sea
Are the waves of time,
As we journey along through life,
‘Tis the set of the soul,
That determines the goal,
And not the calm or the strife.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919) American author and poet.
“‘Tis the Set of the Sail” (1916)
 
Added on 12-Nov-14 | Last updated 12-Nov-14
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A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.

Herm Albright (1876-1944) German-American artist
(Attributed)
 
Added on 3-Jun-14 | Last updated 3-Jun-14
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The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity.

Clara Lucas Balfour (1808-1878) English novelist, lecturer, temperance campaigner
Sunbeams for All Seasons: Counsels, Cautions, and Precepts (1861 ed.)
 
Added on 29-May-13 | Last updated 8-Jul-16
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We cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over our heads, but we can refuse to let them build their nests in our hair.

(Other Authors and Sources)
Chinese proverb
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 11-Feb-20
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And this made me remember that common saying everyone in China was raised with: “If you can’t change your fate, change your attitude.”

Amy Tan (b. 1952) American novelist
The Kitchen God’s Wife, ch. 17 (1991)
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Usually quoted without the attribution to a common saying.
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 1-Dec-14
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Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
The Doctor’s Dilemma, Act 5 [Ridgeon] (1906)
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Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 28-Nov-22
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Life is 10 percent what you make it and 90 percent how you take it.

Irving Berlin (1888-1989) American songwriter [b. Isidore Beilin]
(Attributed)
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Attributed as a comment made by Berlin during a performance of the show This is the Army, Mr. Jones at the Palladium in London in 1943.

Also sometimes attributed to Benjamin Franklin.
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 14-Dec-22
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Every body and every thing conspire to make me as contented as possible in it; yet I have seen too much of the vanity of human affairs, to expect felicity from the splendid scenes of public life. I am still determined to be cheerful and to be happy, in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learnt, from experience, that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us, in our minds, wheresoever we go.

Martha Washington
Martha Washington (1731-1802) American socialite, wife of George Washington, First Lady (1789-1797)
Letter to Mercy Otis Warren (1789-12-26)
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Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 14-Sep-23
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The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves but in our attitude towards them.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944) French writer, aviator
Citadelle [The Wisdom of the Sands], ch. 5 (1948) [tr. Gilbert (1950)]
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Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 3-Nov-23
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Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.

The Bible (The Old Testament) (14th - 2nd C BC) Judeo-Christian sacred scripture [Tanakh, Hebrew Bible], incl. the Apocrypha (Deuterocanonicals)
Proverbs 16:18 [KJV (1611)]
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Source of the common elided version, "Pride goeth before a fall."

Alternate translations:

Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.
[JB (1966), NJB (1985)]

Pride leads to destruction, and arrogance to downfall.
[GNT (1976)]

Pride comes before disaster,
and arrogance before a fall.
[CEB (2011)]

Pride goes before destruction
and a haughty spirit before a fall.
[NRSV (2021 ed.)]

Pride goes before ruin,
Arrogance, before failure.
[RJPS (2023 ed.)]

 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 16-Jan-24
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We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

Viktor Frankl (1905-1997) German-American psychologist, writer
Man’s Search for Meaning, Part 1 (1959)
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Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 12-Nov-19
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Nobody really cares if you’re miserable, so you might as well be happy.

(Other Authors and Sources)
Cynthia Nelms
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 14-Apr-14
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